London-based social enterprise Goldfinger recently launched its Tate Modern furniture collection which is built from fallen trees at the London Design Festival. The furniture collection was displayed at the Material Matters design fair, and designed in collaboration with architecture studio Holland Harvey and the Tate Modern. The pieces were designed for the gallery’s Corner Cafe.
Designer: x Holland Harvey x Tate Modern
“In collaborating with Holland Harvey and Tate Modern, I think we all saw the wide appeal of the sleek and bold design, the ash rescue story, as well as being able to own a piece of Tate Modern,” said Goldfinger associate Lisa Werner “This is Tate’s first foray into furniture and celebrating their commitment to sustainably-minded partners at the outset is really impactful for the commercial market.”
The collection includes a dining table, bench, and stool. The pieces were built using fallen ash trees, in turn celebrating the delicate and elegant beauty of native British wood. The timber would have been destroyed if Goldfinger hadn’t utilized it. The furniture is available in natural and black ash finishes.
The individual pieces feature an engraving of the coordinates of where the fallen trees once stood. “We love to incorporate this storytelling of the tree’s journey,” said Werner. “It is a Goldfinger signature detail to stamp the GPS coordinates of where the tree once stood into each piece, providing a sense of memory and honor for the tree’s first life.”
Almost 500 trees are felled annually, and most of them end up being burnt. Hence, Goldfinger is making a commendable effort to save these fallen trees by transforming them into furniture, instead of letting them get destroyed. The ash wood was sourced from a timber company called Fallen and Felled, which saves trees that fall because of diseases, urban development, or weather. “This not only saves the tree from being chipped or burned for biofuel, it sequesters carbon and removes the need to cut down forests,” said Werner. “Over 90 percent of Britain’s hardwood is imported, we’re on a mission to reverse that trend and promote the raw materials we have right on our doorstep.”
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